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It’s food advertising with a halal twist – billboard posters that go blank in daylight hours during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Halal food distributor Isla Delice is set to launch the posters on August 10 (the beginning of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sunset to sundown) which show an empty table by day. By night (when Muslims get together to eat), and thanks to a clever back-lighting system, the posters change to become replete with delicious traditional Muslim foods.

Isla Delice’s advertising strapline is “Fièrement halal” (“Proud to be halal”). Some 6,000 other billboards promoting their meats (which are slaughtered according to strict Muslim standards) have been on display throughout France since August 2.

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“Mainstream halal advertising campaigns have been about for barely a year,” says Abbas Bendali, head of Solis, an organisation that observes ethnic marketing trends in France. “Halal advertising is accelerating.”

For the first time this year, Reghalal, the halal division of France’s number one chicken brand LDC, launched its own campaign aimed at the Muslim community.

LDC head of marketing Eloise Poirier told FRANCE 24: “There are more and more players in the halal sector, competition is stiff. We have to justify our place on supermarket shelves.”

Reghalal has been advertising – 1,400 billboard posters in Paris and in Lille in northern France – from the beginning of July, very much with Ramadan in mind.